“I felt like all the drug court judge really wanted to do was send you to jail for the slightest infraction,” U.S. Navy veteran Welch said.

The drug court, like many similar ones around the country, was aimed at keeping substance abusers and addicts out of prison, but “they didn’t seem interested in helping me get well, and didn’t seem to care about my personal story, my hardships,” said Welch, now 58, a former drug addict and alcoholic, who, in 1992, was diagnosed with military service-related post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], depression and anxiety.

“And I have to admit that I didn’t go along with the program. Whatever I was supposed to do, I didn’t do.”

By 2004, the year Welch first landed in drug court, he’d been arrested for a series of offenses, including shoplifting, burglary and assaults—crimes he committed, he says, to finance a cocaine addiction that, in turn, was his way of self-medicating the mental illnesses.

At the time, he’d opted—foolishly, he conceded—against being treated by psychiatrists and other mental health clinicians.

What finally turned his life around, he said, was having his criminal case shifted in 2008—the last year he was arrested for drug-related crimes—from drug court to the then brand-new Buffalo Veterans Treatment Court.

Feeling Understood’

From Day 1 until his graduation 12 months later from the Buffalo program, he felt understood. He felt a kinship with other vets who were defendants or who had volunteered to mentor defendants.

He was particularly impressed by the empathy social workers, the judge and other court officials displayed toward those who had served their country in battle or defended it during peacetime, he said.

“We come in there with charges that can carry hefty [prison] sentences,” said Welch, now a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs peer specialist, counseling and steering other troubled veterans.

“But the judge, the mentors, everyone in veterans court, makes you feel proud to be a veteran. They thank you for your service. So, my whole mindset changed.”

He continued: “Every time I went to veterans court, they asked me how I was doing: ‘What do you need?’ They got to know my wife. There was a camaraderie that simply did not exist in drug court. The veterans in veterans court had been where I’d been, they’d seen what I’d seen. They knew who I was.”

Veterans courts, along with a relatively small but growing tally of jail- and prison-based programs for incarcerated veterans, including those providing mental and behavioral health care, are part of a broad strategy to serve criminally accused ex-military personnel, especially non-violent offenders, and to either divert them from incarceration or shorten their period of incarceration.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ latest available figures, from 2004, 10 percent of those confined to state and federal prisons were veterans.

Before serving in the military, the bulk of those criminally charged veterans had never been officially accused of committing a criminal act, observers said.

“These courts are not going to work 100 percent of the time for all the veterans whose cases wind up there,” said Fulton County [Ga.] Superior Court Judge Todd Markle, who oversees a veterans court in Atlanta, founded in 2013 as the first such court in Georgia. He estimates that half of the veteran defendants in his court have been diagnosed with mental illness.

“But,” Markle added, “the reduction of rates of recidivism for this group are dramatic … Many of these veterans had been relatively highly functioning [before their military service]. In an era of multiple deployments, of rising rates of PTSD … and of some veterans layering drug abuse on top of their mental illness, the work of veterans courts is critical.”

Licensed professional counselor Marla Patterson, mental health coordinator for Fulton County’s veterans, drug and mental health courts, called “accountability courts,” said, “We recognize when folks are adhering to the rigors of the program, when they are taking their meds and when they’re not. We try to catch them when they’re slipping.”

While the rules of conventional courts are comparatively rigorous, veterans courts allow for some flexibility. Generally, such courts mandate mental health and behavioral counseling, regular tests to guard against illicit drug use, adherence to prescribed anti-psychotic or other mental health meds, appointments kept with probation and other law enforcement officials, job training, educational enrollment, and periodic monitoring to ensure the veteran has stable housing.

Veterans must account for their progress—or lack of it—in those areas when they show up in courts such as the one in Buffalo, which meets the first and third Tuesday of each month. Its youngest veterans served in recent and current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

‘I’m Still Staying Clean’

“I’m still staying clean, your honor,” Charles Johnson, told Judge Robert Russell, founder of Buffalo’s veterans court and, with his staff, a sought-after trainer of treatment court professionals, during an afternoon session in September 2015.

“I’m still taking my meds. I’m still going to my PTSD group. Just handling my business, your honor, and trying to get there.”

Noting that the day also marked Johnson’s 66th birthday, Russell solicited a round of applause and well wishes from a courtroom filled with veterans, their relatives, corrections officers, prosecutors, paralegals and others.

That afternoon, the judge also acknowledged the handful of veterans who’d met the court’s requirements, and were graduating and moving on, hopefully, without committing another crime: “Ladies and gentlemen, give a nice salute to Mr. Sherrod.”

There was a standing ovation. Russell left his judge’s chair to embrace Maurice Sherrod and shake his hand.

“Well, it wasn’t easy,” Sherrod told the Russell and the packed courtroom. “And I have a long way to go. With the court’s help, I know I’m on my way.”

He reflected further, mainly addressing the other veteran defendants: “The first day I came to veterans court, the judge smiled at me and I started looking around to see if I was in the wrong place. But I finally got over it …

“The biggest thing is to stay on your medication. And take everything one day at a time.”

Then, Russell offered what has become his constant refrain: “On your journey, we talk about working closely with our counselors … and about treatment … and about always being mindful of people, places and things. The places we go, the company we keep.”

Russell, who is not a military veteran, is known for his aplomb in court, for granting second, third and fourth chances to those who fail certain court requirements, but also for dealing with veterans who, excessively flout the court’s prescribed regimen for them.

Some veterans do return to court under police escort, shackled and in county jail-issued detainee uniforms.

“What’s going on is such a delicate balancing act, juggling what the court needs and what the person really needs,” said Barry Chapman, a Veterans Affairs social worker who is assigned to the Buffalo court. “That’s part of what makes this so effective.”

For his part, Russell presides exclusively over Buffalo’s drug, mental health and veterans courts. That’s his way, he said, of better serving a safety-minded public but also the criminally accused. He’d rather not habitually, reflexively, lock people up, least of all the mentally ill, addicts and veterans.

[Editors Note: Judge Russell described his work on the Buffalo Court during the 2011 John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America. For a podcast of his panel, please click here and go to podcasts for Panel #2.]

Even after veterans graduate from Russell’s court—most do so within18 months to two years, officials said—some grads return to crime.

But among veterans who graduated from the Buffalo court, just 8.75 percent commit another crime within two years of graduating, O’Connor, also a veteran, said.

Another veteran, Patrick Welch, who isn’t related to Manuel, the veterans court grad mentioned at the top of this article, is a senior mentor for the Buffalo court.

“The dynamic that we have seen developed in our court and in other courts is similar to that of the military,” said Patrick, who previously taught a course on military culture at Daemen College in Amherst, NY.

“If you are in a unit,” he added, “with a good company commander and good non-commissioned officers … the junior enlisted ranks will march through the gates of hell for them … In court, the judge becomes the commanding officer.”

He continued: “The mentors become the NCOs and the staff, NCOs, leading the junior enlisted, the veterans. You see the veterans go to parade rest, chest out, hands behind their backs, looking the judge right in the eye, saying ‘yes, sir’ or ‘no, sir.’ Those people who are participants in the court get to the point of knowing that the judge and we mentors really care about them.

“They, therefore, mainly do not want to disappoint us.”

More Effective Than Drug Courts?

While it is probably too soon to accurately assess recidivism and the overall quality of veterans lives after graduating from veterans courts, given their relative newness, the anecdotal evidence suggests veterans courts will outshine drug courts, which began operating more than 20 years ago, according to Chris Deutsch, who is communications director for both Justice for Vets and the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

“We’re going to see these [veterans] courts exceed the effectiveness of drugs courts in several different ways,” Deutsch said. “When you look at cost-saving, most veterans go to VA for treatment, so that removes a huge community costs for treatment that we don’t have with drug courts.

“Also, the veterans treatment court, plain and simple, is different from any other court you go to. The structure appeals to veterans who are used to being in a structured environment. They buy in a lot faster to the process.”

Veteran David Ridgeway, 30, hit Army boot camp three weeks after graduating from high school in Buffalo. During two separate tours in Iraq he spent “a total of 27 months.”

“The way of life, the heat, us wearing all that gear in that heat. It’s unreal,” Ridgeway said. ” … Just the not-knowing, but going out every day and clearing the way, looking for IEDs, improvised explosive devises … ”

He wears a pewter bracelet engraved with “Staff Sgt. Stephen A. Seale, Sgt. Carlton A. Clark, Cpl. Jose Zamora,” buddies who were killed on Aug. 6, 2006 in Baghdad. Two high school pals, Ben Schuster and William Mason III, also died in Iraq. “I called home one day and my sister was just hysterical: Ben died …”

He returned home in August 2010. Shortly afterward, he was charged with reckless endangerment. Driving and approaching a Buffalo freeway overpass one day, he had a flashback: “In Iraq, whenever you came to a bridge … in that Humvee, you put the pedal to the medal and just go, hoping you’d dodge a sniper or bomb or whatever. What I remember the night of my accident was driving fast. They say I was doing 99. I lost control of the vehicle … I hit a guy. Thank God, he wasn’t hurt.”

Ridgeway has PTSD—”They say it never goes away, that I just have to learn to deal with it”— takes Prozac to combat depression, Marzipan for the anxiety and a sleeping pill to quell his insomnia. Among other mandates, he attends group therapy at the VA three times a week.

“It was definitely a blessing that I made it into veterans court,” Ridgeway said. “But I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on … Not to be hard-beaded, but it’s hard for me to get to group. I have a [donated] bus pass. But just being on the bus with groups of people, that’s a struggle.

“I go to Walmart at three in the morning to avoid the fast pace of people. Iraq changes you. A part of you, you leave other … But I do have hope. I have no choice except to have hope.”

For VA counselor Welch, veterans court forced him to address his mental illnesses, which he considers a major achievement. He has linked his PTSD, depression and anxiety to what he faced during four years, ending in 1979, working as a machinist and throttleman on U.S. Navy ships and submarines.

“Being under water, not seeing daylight for days and days and days affects you,” said Welch, who earned a University of Buffalo bachelor’s degree, focusing on mental health and substance abuse counseling, in 2013.

“So does being racially profiled, as an African American, touring Korea, Japan, Australia, and stopping in at ports where you may become a target once you venture off the ship. The drugs and drinking were my way of handling everything that was messing with me.

“Once I got to veterans court, I had to start peeling back the onion. I started going to self-help groups … I stopped doing the [illegal] drugs, which was like losing a girlfriend. But I started seeing stuff, I started learning stuff. I went deeper into my depression and anxiety and PTSD, but I also got better.

A year—to the day—after his baby brother was shot dead in a Kansas prairie town, German Villegas’ best buddy in Afghanistan was killed by a bomb he’d been ordered to find and defuse.

“We were both on the list to search for explosives,” Villegas recalled.

But U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Michael J. Palacios was the one dispatched that day in November 2012. “He got hit by a 200-pound IED,” two months before both men were slated to go home, Villegas said.

Villegas returned stateside, a shattered man.

“My number-one goal was to get drunk and just try to forget everything,” said the 23-year-old, who joined the Marines straight out of high school and spent five years there. Fired from the military police, he was shunted into what he calls “punitive duties” that had him cleaning up after battalion officers and picking up trash.

But the worst were the funeral details.

“(That) was the completely wrong thing for me to have to do,” he continued. “Every time I did one of these funerals, I’m seeing these families crying. I became pretty good at compartmentalizing—or so I thought.”

Villegas was sitting that afternoon in the communal area outside an all-male cell block at a San Diego County Sheriff’s Department jail, where he landed after being arrested for an assault on his fiancée. A few feet away, at the Vista Detention Facility, stood one of the deputy sheriffs, also a veteran, who asked to be assigned to that cell block. Just beyond that deputy was a Marine Corps retiree and correctional counselor who directs Vista’s almost two-year-old Veterans Moving Forward Program.

One of a handful of such projects in the United States, the program makes available to convicted ex-military men and those awaiting trial—including those like Villegas who’ve been diagnosed with mental illness—counseling, peer-to-peer support and other amenities rarely extended to people behind bars.

Minutes before Villegas gave a visitor his take on what war extracts from combatants and innocents alike, he had queued up at a nurse’s cart, where anti-psychotic and other prescribed drugs were dispensed to jailed veterans with mental illnesses. (Those with only physical ailments also filled their prescriptions.)

Villegas’ meds are intended to help him stave off anxiety, depression and the flashbacks, nightmares, hyper-arousal, hyper-alertness and exponential moodiness that are among the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Such maladies are likely what triggered his admitted episode of violence. For Villegas, like so many other criminally charged veterans, had no history of illegal activity prior to military service.

“Jail is the last place I thought I would end up and the last place I thought I would find help, but this program has become a foundation that I can trust,” Villegas said. “The moment I came here and saw those military flags on the walls, it brought me to tears. There’s a brotherhood here … and there are things here that I need to restore my mental health, to get whole again.”

Jailed Vets 10% of Incarcerated In Most Recent Data

There are no current figures for the number of veterans confined to state and federal prisons. According to the most recent statistics available from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, dating from 2004, they comprise 10 percent of the incarcerated population.

Aiming to serve them are the relatively few units such as San Diego County’s (which, unlike most of the nation’s jails, allows some convicted persons to serve their sentences in county jail, instead of state prisons, the result of a 2011 revamp of California’s penal laws).

Generally, the veterans volunteer to be diverted to such units through special veterans-only treatment courts—about 220 exist around the country—that form another arm of a broad and growing strategy to keep as many criminally accused former military personnel as possible out from behind bars.

That strategy is being pursued as the nation grapples with how to balance citizen demands for public safety with efforts to pare incarceration costs, incarceration rates, and the risks that those released from prison will return to crime.

In that quest, veterans have emerged as a prime target.

For one thing, their service and sacrifice make it hard for would-be critics of “perks” for prisoners to scoff at programs aimed at incarcerated veterans’ uplift, said Melissa Fitzgerald, senior director of Fairfax, Va.-based Justice for Vets.

“Our veterans, including the ones struggling to get on their feet, served us,” said Fitzgerald, a judge’s daughter and actor who spent seven years playing Carol in NBC’s The West Wing before signing on at Vets for Justice.

“They deserve our support and the opportunity to fight for their personal freedom. That’s something that most of us can agree on.”

Editor’s Note: Vietnam veteran Ron Perez speaks out on what he describes as the nation’s neglect of the mental toll that combat stress has taken on returning military personnel.

Military-Style Discipline

Even in civilian life, veterans often follow a military-style discipline, regimen and routine. That capacity to heed the rules—at least in certain settings—lends veterans-only units a relative peace and day-to-day manageability not typically seen among the general population of incarcerated persons, according to the professionals who have worked with them.

“Generally, veterans have a somewhat higher level of education, at least a GED or high school diploma.” said social worker Christine Brown-Taylor, the sheriff’s department’s re-entry services manager. “They’re trained in a skill. Some have college or college equivalency. These things help.”

“Anybody who joins the military has a certain determination,” he said. “If you made it through boot camp that, in itself, was a major accomplishment. The idea is to get them back to that place, get them back to a mentality of accomplishing an assignment … Their rightful place is not sitting in here, just being locked up.”

San Diego County’s unit is situated in Vista, 40 miles north of San Diego. It is modeled after the City and County of San Francisco Sheriff’s Department’s Community of Veterans Engaged in Restoration (COVER) project, which launched in 2010 in San Bruno, CA.

San Diego ‘Vet Modules’

But the San Bruno veterans unit has accommodated fewer veterans than has San Diego County’s.

So far, at Vista, where the oldest veteran inmate fought in the Korean War, roughly 270 veterans have been funneled through what jail officials refer to as “vet modules.” The two adjoining modules accommodate 64 inmates 32 in each module—out of a countywide system that handles about 5,000 pretrial and convicted inmates a day.

Vet module participants can get an extra pillow or extra mattress. Flat screen TVs are bolted to cinderblock walls of units also adorned with renderings of the Statue of Liberty, the Stars and Stripes, and flags from the U.S. military’s five branches—all painted by prisoners or correction officers who themselves formerly served in the military.

There’s a makeshift library of books, movies and videogames; an X-box; chairs, instead of metal stools, for seating; a soda vending machine, microwave oven and morning coffee; and a computer for checking email and conducting research.

The module’s “reading legacy” project videotapes fathers as they read children’s books, and mails those recordings to inmates’ offspring.

“It’s to create a better bond,” said inmate Clyde Johnson, 50, whose beige, jail-issued uniform designates him as a stipend-earning inmate who helps lead one of the vet modules.

The module’s inmate cells are unlocked for most of the day. Community volunteers steer the veterans through yoga exercises or a 15-minute silence-and-sound therapy meditation.

“Breathe into your heart,” a volunteer teacher, during one session, told veterans reclining in chairs or bunks of their unlocked cells. “Sit up on the bed or lay on your back. Try not to fall asleep.”

She enlisted a veteran inmate to, on cue, sound the cymbals in the dimly lit room.

Also, in the modules, there’s one-on-one counseling, group therapy, and meetings sponsored by Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. A caseworker runs part of that programming; Vista’s staff psychologist runs another part. The jail contracts a psychiatrist who is on call and arrives for standing appointments and for medical emergencies.

There are mandatory classes in, among other life skills, anger management, overcoming drug and other addictions, parenting and grandparenting, holding down a steady job, succeeding in college, and corralling a crew of right-living friends.

Community volunteers and deputies run other courses. So do those designated inmate-leaders whose khaki-beige uniforms stand out in a sea of navy blue inmate garb emblazoned with “S.D. Jail.”

Ronald Holt, 55, wears blue.

For stealing a neighbor’s generator—”Even though I gave it back,” Holt said—he was sentenced to 14 months in the county jail.

“The problem with my mental health and my learning disability is that it can be very hard to find real work,” said Holt, who spent two years in the U.S. Air Force.

He has PTSD—though that, he believes, resulted from a head injury sustained after he fell off a roof in 1983. In 2000, doctors at the California Rehabilitation Center, a state prison in the city of Norco, where he served a prior prison sentence, diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, whose symptoms include extreme emotional highs and lows; schizoaffective disorder, whose symptoms include hallucinations and delusions; and anxiety. Daily, he takes four different medications to quell and contain those diseases.

The streamlined mental health care, along with the vets module menu of activities, makes a big difference to Holt.

“Before I got here, I had lived through 10 years of all kinds of hell,” he said. “The change from here to there is 360 degrees. I have hope now.”

Lt. Mike Nichols, of the county’s sheriff’s department, is one of eight officers who volunteered to stand guard and otherwise work in the vets modules. All eight also are former military men.

Nichols believes that the success of the approach is reflected in the unit’s atmosphere, which bears little resemblance to the charged tension of most jails.

“We’ve not had any big disagreements, no fights, [fake] illness issues, or disciplinary issues where they tear up the cells, write on the walls,” Nichols said. “They follow the rules, which are strict.”

Those who break the rules are dealt with summarily. Some 28 inmates have been booted from the program since it launched, said counselor Morales, who spent 24 years as a Marine.

Teaching Tolerance and Problem-Solving

To a group of nine veterans who, in spring 2015, were on Day 1 in the vets module, Morales was plain and upfront about the rigors of his program.

“Everybody here will room with a person of the opposite race,” Morales said.

He paused. Noticing a twenty-something whose fidgeting, shuffling feet and vocal outbursts suggested he was in psychiatric crisis, Morales sent him for a medical evaluation.

(His bunk would be waiting for him, unless he required a different kind of triage, Morales told a visitor later.)

Morales continued addressing the newcomers: “We teach tolerance here. We teach problem-solving, how to communicate and get rid of biases. If you can’t work on those things, you do not belong here. Our main mission is to have you never come back to jail.

“If you think you want to come back to jail, let me know now.”

Not one of the newcomers spoke up.

The Toll from Iraq and Afghanistan

Based largely on U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs data, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has reported that about 18.5 percent of returning Iraq or Afghanistan veterans have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or depression. Some 19.5 percent self-report a traumatic brain injury.

The data also show a more disturbing figure, some observers said. According to Veteran Affairs (VA) analysts, half of returning military personnel who are estimated to need mental health care search for it; and half of those who get care do not get adequate care.

But so far, not even the federal government has an exact profile of veterans’ physical and mental health. According to a 2007 VA report, cases of mental illness among veterans getting care from the VA surged 58 percent between June 2006 and June 2007, from 63,767 to 100,580 cases. Their diagnoses included PTSD, drug and alcohol addiction and depression.

Berger, a Vietnam veteran, who has served previously as the Health Council’s senior policy analyst for veterans’ benefits and mental health, has testified before Congress, sometimes rolling out examples of what he describes as the VA’s piecemeal parsing of mental illness among vets:

At least 30.9 percent of Vietnam veterans suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder at some point after 1980.

At least 84.8 percent of PTSD-diagnosed Vietnam veterans currently are at least moderately impaired by that illness.

Between 2002 and January 2014, 118,829 of deployed Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were diagnosed with PTSD.

In 2013 alone, 12,632 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were diagnosed with PTSD.

11 percent to 20 percent of all Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans now have PTSD.

As many as 460,000 Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans—out of 2.8 million veterans of those incursions—have diagnosed or undiagnosed PTSD.

Units Around the Nation

While the exact figures regarding veterans’ mental health remain unclear, the number of jail and prison programs for incarcerated veterans with and without mental illness barely responds to the need, according to a range of criminal justice and mental health advocates and policymakers.

a 16-bed unit at the Muscogee County Jail in Columbus, Ga., opened in April 2012;

a total of 400 beds across five Florida Department of Corrections prisons opened on Veterans Day 2011;

a 96-bed unit operated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as one of the nation’s first units, with 96 beds, opened in 2002.

There are no similar units for incarcerated women veterans.

But while the number of such units may be inadequate to address the need, they represent what some see as a promising departure from the past.

Traumatized veterans of Vietnam and earlier conflicts wars were dismissed as “shell-shocked” and received nominal, if any, mental health care, said Glennis Goodwin, 61, one of the beige-uniformed inmate leaders at the Vista facility.

The American Psychiatric Association officially added brain- and behavior-altering PTSD to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders only in 1980. Research on the psychological and psychiatric impact of traumatic brain injury (TBI)—a hallmark harm of the current wars and weapons of warfare—is just beginning to ramp up, observers said.

“Our fellow Americans figured that somehow, magically, we would just get over it all,” added Goodwin, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1987 but accepted “the reality of that” in 2003.

“I spent 16 years and nine months in the Army,” said Goodwin, also diagnosed with PTSD. “In 1987, the Army asked me to retire because I choked an ensign … despite my years of service and my medals for exemplary conduct and what not. It was part of a downward spiral.

“We soldiers drank our troubles away, we fought, we had good camaraderie. And when I came back home, I got spit on and talked about all because I went to a place where my government told me I had to go …

“Much of what we suffered got swept under the rug. I have been such an angry man. I’ve sold drugs—and been in solar-energy building construction—and I’ve fought police. I wound up in here. Finally, I am taking the lesson. I’m betting that something deep in my inner man has changed.”

Other inmates said being in a veterans-only unit has been cathartic—even if the future, beyond incarceration, presents some critical unknowns. Will the mental health and other medical treatment they get outside jail be the same quality and consistency as inside? What of jobs, housing, schooling?

The vets module is supported by veterans organizations and other non-profits whose members provide mentoring, connections that might lead to employment, housing and so forth, said Morales, vet module director.

“We have our successes,” he continued. “We have a lot of individuals who are out (and) working who call me every month and say ‘I have a job, I’m in school … ‘ Getting out of jail is one thing. But if they don’t have help, if they run into trouble, what then?

“Community involvement helps make the difference. We need much more of that.”

Imagining a Better Future

The San Diego module has already made a difference to German Villegas.

Being incarcerated alongside other veterans, hearing their encouragement and having their support, has helped him imagine a better future for himself, his fiancé and their one-year-old daughter.

Over and over again, he sketched that baby in pencil on drawing pads donated to the vets module.

The sketches are pasted on his cell’s cinderblock walls.

“I am light years from where I started when I got here,” Villegas said. “I felt abandoned by a lot of people and by the military. When you think you are setting out to do something great, something bigger than yourself, by joining the military and you get home from Afghanistan in the middle of the night in a place where no one is there to greet you, you realize that people have very short memories.

“I got no post-deployment mental health assessment. I’d wanted to go to aviation school but I found out the GI bill doesn’t cover that … Nevertheless, being with these veterans has helped me get back to who I was before … I’m part of that community. I plan to take that confidence with me when I leave here.”

Calling the vets module a “collaboration,” he said. “I learn from the young cats. I try to apply that to my life. I suspect that they do the same when they check out us older cats. We all vibe off each other. We root for each other. We are trying to stay the course.”

That’s the kind of attitude San Diego County Sheriff William Gore aimed to engender when he and his staff rejiggered existing funds—the San Francisco Sheriff’s veterans program launched with a special government grant—to create the veterans programs, jail officials said.

“I’ve been in corrections 27 years,” said Lt. Robert Mitchell, Gore’s lead administrator. “And for most of those 27 years, nobody talked about what offenders who are veterans face.

“It was: they got arrested, they got sent to jail or prison. They got out and often committed another crime. Our vets module is getting us where we want to go. It’s baby steps, but it’s huge steps.”

]]>Bringing the Wars Back Homehttps://thecrimereport.org/2014/06/03/2014-06-bringing-the-wars-back-home/
Tue, 03 Jun 2014 10:26:32 +0000http://localhost/2014/06/03/2014-06-bringing-the-wars-back-home/The story told by Russell Whitehead last week in a mammoth ballroom at the Anaheim Marriot Hotel, just outside of southern California's Disneyland, was as harrowing as it was routine to anyone familiar with the ravages of alcohol addiction.

He spoke about the humiliation of being shackled in court after a succession of DUIs, of appearing filthy, smelling and hung-over from the night before, and facing the prospect of days, weeks or months in hellish jails with no hope of getting better.

But what made his tale special was the fact that in his most recent court appearance, he was subjected to none of the humiliation. Thanks to a Veteran's Treatment (VT) Court in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he was given a new lease on life.

The process and the experience was no walk in the park. Facing a possible nine years in prison for his second and third DUI convictions, Whitehead's alternative was the VT Court and wearing a “scram” monitoring device around his ankle that tested him for alcohol every 30 minutes, 24/7 for six months—all of which gave him, he says “a large sense of accountability.”

That, and receiving exactly the right kind of counseling for his severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) condition, turned his life around.

Tall and slim at 28, with a neatly trimmed brown beard, Whitehead served in the second Iraq War as a medic for three years. He was one of thousands of vets who have been given a new lease on life by Veterans Treatment Courts, a problem-solving alternative to traditional courtrooms, targeted at veterans who get into minor brushes with the law.

Whitehead was among more than 400 vets and supporters attending a four-day conference marking the 25th anniversary of the establishment of U.S. drug courts. They were only a small segment of the 4,000-plus attendees at the conference, but they represented one of the country's most poignant challenges.

Veterans Treatment Courts are one of the many offshoots of the problem-solving approach pioneered by drug courts—but as the end of America's post 9/11 decade of overseas conflicts draws to an end, the prospect of thousands of young men and women returning home has put a new spotlight on the need for ways to deal with problems triggered by their combat experiences.

A 'Critical Mass'

“All these Iraq and Afghanistan vets coming home create a critical mass,” said Tom Tarantino, chief policy officer for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, who spoke at the conference.

“Veterans courts are cheaper and more effective, and they're helping to protect the billions of dollars we've already invested in an entire generation of men and women. It's one of the few things we're doing in criminal justice that actually works.”

The “Vet Court Con” segment of last week's conference was sponsored by Justice for Vets, a partner of the Drug Court movement, and the moving force behind the VT Courts' rapid expansion.

Underscoring that expansion of therapeutic and legal approaches to veterans' problems, participants (including volunteer mentors) were able to choose from a rich menu of over 60 workshops on subjects ranging from “De-escalation of the Veteran in Crisis;” “Working with Justice Involved Female Veterans;” and “The Icy Stairway from Combat Trauma to Substance Abuse.”

Most returning vets of course never find themselves on the wrong side of the law. But there are many whose problems have been aggravated by the recurring traumas of combat.

Up until recently, there was little understanding of their special needs. Now, thanks to Justice for Vets, and its parent body, the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, VT Courts are trying to change the dynamic.

150 VT Courts, and Growing

Since the first VT Court was established in Buffalo, NY in 2008, 150 similar courts have sprung up around the country, with several hundred more in the planning stage. Currently, nearly 7,000 ex-service members are participating.

“So many veterans treatment courts are being developed”, says Justice for Vets media spokesman Chris Deutsch, “that we have a long list of volunteer Vet mentors and others waiting to get into the next training session.”

The expansion couldn't be timelier.

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, of the 2.4 million American veterans of the years of war in Iraq or Afghanistan, approximately 460,000 are suffering from PTSD or severe depression.

Many others have had traumatic brain injuries. According to a Pew Research Center study many of the vets they surveyed reported “experiencing bursts of anger in their daily lives.” Another survey found that 51 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan vets personally knew a fellow vet who'd attempted suicide.

Tarantino, a former cavalry captain in Iraq, started working on veterans' issues following his discharge from the army in 2007. He was astonished to discover the number of vets ensnared in the criminal justice system.

Many ended up in jail with untreated mental and physical ailments, and came out worse than when they went in.

Tarantino concedes it's hard to put a number on the problem. In 2004, the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics found that about 10 percent of state prisoners were veterans, which is actually a law figure, compared with say, 1986, when the figure was 20 percent.

In 2008, the Bureau reported the same 10 percent figure for jails. But there are so many more – massively more – relatively young vets, that percentage is likely to rise.

One of the biggest challenges, he says, is identifying vets who need help early.

“We need to be able to intervene before their minor offenses lead to major crimes,” Tarantino maintains. “That's why these courts are so important.”

Sitting at the table with Tarantino was Melissa Fitzgerald, the recently appointed senior director of Justice for Vets.

Fitzgerald explains that while VT Courts are modeled on drug courts, there are important differences.

One is that VT Courts are specialty courts with a sub-specialty in military veterans. A second is that by their very nature VT Courts provide a deep well of expertise and focus on aspects of mental health and substance abuse unique to vets, such as PTSD.

They are also particularly devoted to obtaining housing, jobs and other services for the vets in the courts.

In a typical drug court, arrestees are assigned a team that usually consists of a defense attorney, a police officer, a social worker, and a prosecutor.

Mentoring Vets

In VT Courts, however, this team usually includes a representative from the VA as well, a couple of paid vets who coordinate services — and almost always, unpaid veteran-volunteers who serve as one-on-one mentors and assist in a multitude of different ways in getting their fellow vets through the recovery process, and the alphabet soup of veterans' services that can be so difficult to access.

“The most powerful distinction between a drug court and vet courts is the bonding with the vets within the community,” Fitzgerald says.

“This is vet-to-vet in the courtroom; vet mentors are then not only a support but also assist in connecting them to all the benefits they earned.

“If they want to go to community college, vet mentors know how to make things happen. They are resource connectors.”

Assigned in VT Court, the volunteer mentors provide practical, material and psychological support, as well as a communal bond built on military camaraderie – something that's hard to find on the outside.

The scope and ambition of their Boot Camp training at last week's conference was astoundingly comprehensive and detailed.

The goal of Justice for Vets is to build a Justice for Vets Mentor Corps ready, says Fitzgerald, to “serve around the country” with the same dedication they brought to their original military service.

At the end of one session I approached one of the attendees.

He was, it turned out, not a would-be mentor volunteer, but the District Attorney for the Northwestern District of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, named David E. Sullivan.

Sullivan and his staff were attending the session to observe how the mentor-volunteer concept worked, and how he could adopt it and other aspects of the drug court to two courts planned for his district.

Three years ago, when he became DA, Sullivan tells me, he started “Vets Justice Partnership,” a coalition of over 30 organizations working to “get 168 court-involved vets and incarcerated vets through the court process last year alone, and get them rehabilitated.”

“We came here to learn how to help vets in a much more productive way.”

“It's not just about vets getting help,” he went on. “It's about vets giving help to folks going through a tough process.”

Joe Domanick is West Coast Bureau Chief for the Crime report. He welcomes comments from readers.

]]>The Death Penalty and Combat Vetshttps://thecrimereport.org/2014/01/30/2014-01-the-death-penalty-and-combat-vets/
Thu, 30 Jan 2014 12:51:32 +0000http://localhost/2014/01/30/2014-01-the-death-penalty-and-combat-vets/At the sprawling Allan B. Polunsky Unit—which houses some 300 people on death row in Livingston, TX—John Darrell Thuesen awaits word of a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruling that he hopes will spare his life.

The appeal is being closely watched across the country.

Before Thuesen, 30, was convicted on capital murder charges following a highly publicized trial in 2010, and became Inmate No. 99957, he was a decorated U.S. Marine lance corporal in Iraq, where he served from August 2004 to September 2005.

The trauma he suffered in combat, Thuesen argues, left him with impaired mental capacity—and should therefore exempt him from capital punishment.

Many legal experts agree.

“If someone has combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or a traumatic brain injury (TBI) related to something that occurred in war, (he or she) should be entitled to a categorical exemption from the death penalty,” argues Anthony Giardino, an Atlanta attorney and Iraq war veteran who proposed the exemption in an article publishedin The Fordham Law Review in 2009.

“So many mistakes can be made in the courtroom that a jury might not always get a full picture about the impact of PTSD on some combat veterans. This isn’t a run-of-the-mill felony or misdemeanor case.”

As America’s military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan draws down, the argument has become part of an emotional—and contentious—national debate about PTSD, with some experts claiming that it is just one of a number of factors that may drive violent criminality.

“It’s a small subset of those with PTSD who act violently or get arrested – so you’re actually talking about a subset of a subset,” argues Eric Elbogen, a clinical psychologist at a veterans’ hospital in Durham, NC.

“If you look at statistics, PTSD is relevant—but so is financial instability, not being able to meet basic needs, and not having a support network. Just like civilians, veterans have the same risk factors for criminal arrest.”

There is no current data on the number of American military veterans on death row; nor are there figures on the number of former soldiers incarcerated nationwide, including those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Vets in Prison

The most recent U.S. Department of Justice statistics date to 2004, when 140,000 veterans—most of whom fought in Vietnam—were held in federal and state correctional facilities. In that year, about 18,000 ex-soldiers were either serving life sentences or facing capital punishment.

But the impact of a proposed veterans’ exemption from the death penalty is potentially broad.

To date, more than two million Americans have, at some point, been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq since the conflicts began in 2001 and 2003, respectively. And while the vast majority of returning soldiers won’t be diagnosed with PTSD, a 2008 RAND study found that some 300,000 veterans met the criteria for it.

Some recent criminal cases have raised the question of the impact of a veteran’s combat-related trauma:

Gary Smith, a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan, was sentenced to 28 years in prison after being convicted in 2012 of shooting his roommate in Maryland;

Louis Bressler, who was deployed to Iraq, is currently serving a 60-year prison sentence after a 2009 conviction on first-degree homicide in Colorado;

Pierre Cole, who fought in Iraq, is serving a 50-year prison sentence after the 2004 murder of a Chicago storeowner.

A 2008 New York Timestally revealed 121 cases of recent combat veterans indicted on major criminal charges. But this may only be the tip of the iceberg, according to some researchers.

A pair of mental health practitioners—Hal S. Wortzel of the University of Colorado and David Arciniegas at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston—argued in a 2010 article for The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, that a death penalty exclusion for combat veterans diagnosed with trauma “warrants further consideration” by the criminal justice system.

“You’re talking about survivors who had multiple tours in war and are coming back with symptoms of layered PTSD,” says Shad Meshad, founder of the Los Angeles-based National Veterans Foundation. “It’s like a bomb waiting to go off for some people.”

“They’re back on the streets with no job, home foreclosures, and the worst economic times since the Great Depression,” adds Meshad, whose organization is funding a forthcoming book entitled The Attorney’s Guide To Defending Veterans in Criminal Court. “So, what else can go wrong?”

Over the Edge

The Thuesen case underlines the tragedy of vets whose combat experience may have tipped them over the edge into committing violent acts back home, experts contend.

Just after 12:30 p.m. on March 9, 2009, police in College Station, TX, responding to a report of shots fired, found Thuesen—wearing blood-splattered jeans and a T-shirt—in the garage, near the body of his girlfriend, Rachel Joiner. According to police reports, the 21-year-old Texas A&M University student used her last breaths to identify Thuesen as the shooter.

He reportedly also used a .45-caliber handgun to fatally shoot her older brother, Travis.

At the time, Thuesen was paying for college with military benefits. But months earlier, his lawyer notes, he checked himself into a local veterans hospital—reporting that he was hearing voices.

By then, he already had a criminal record for violating a protective order filed against him by a previous girlfriend following a series of domestic violence incidents.

And while Thuesen’s experiences in Iraq were examined at the trial, his appeal argues that the jury wasn’t fully apprised of his psychiatric afflictions.

“The defense had a [Veterans Administration] doctor who wasn’t allowed to testify about John’s PTSD,” says Frank Blazek, an attorney for Thuesen.

“The state pushed back against the diagnosis with testimony about what police observed at the time of the shooting, (but) John is hopeful that the courts will seriously review his case.”

(A Polunsky Unit spokesperson said that while a staff psychologist is available for death row inmates, records don’t indicate that Thuesen is using the service.)

High Court Ruling

In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of a Korean War veteran convicted in a 1986 double homicide after ruling that defense lawyers must present evidence of PTSD-related war trauma in cases involving veterans. Both California and Minnesota require special sentencing hearings for veterans diagnosed with PTSD.

During criminal trials for most ex-soldiers, an intense battle is typically waged over dueling interpretations of PTSD and mental health experts.

“On the prosecutorial side, there’s always a little bit of fear that some malingering is going on,” explains Steven Jansen, chief operating officer for the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys. “That’s why the prosecutor pushes for those defendants to be evaluated by the state.”

Still, a PTSD-oriented defense guarantees nothing.

In 2008, Iraq war veteran Jessie Bratcher faced 25 years-to-life for a fatal 2008 shooting in Salem, OR. But after Bratcher’s conviction, the judge ruled that he could serve his sentence at a mental hospital. This week, the state’s psychiatric review board ruled — after an exhaustive seven-hour hearing—that he’s eligible for release without conditions.

But elsewhere, a jury in Torrance, CA rejected the PTSD defense of two-tour Iraq veteran Tymarc Warren, and sentenced him to life in prison last year for the 2011 murder of his girlfriend.

Another case in Arkansas involving Steven Russell Jr, tried last year for the fatal 2009 shooting of a 24-year-old woman in North Little Rock, further underlines the complex legal issues involved. Even though prosecutors agreed that Russell had PTSD—following a tour of duty in Iraq that reportedly included the grim task of recovering bodies— the state supreme court has since determined that he was fully culpable and upheld his sentence of life without parole.

Nevertheless, argues Blasker, the impact of war-related PTSD is so debilitating that combat veterans should be excluded from facing capital punishment entirely.

“It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card,” said Blazek, who also represents Dominique Lasker, a decorated Army Sergeant who now stands accused of double homicide in Brookshire, TX. “Life in prison without parole is severe punishment, but state executions should be for the worst of the worst.”

It’s a point that anti-death penalty opponents are also seizing upon.

“We should be drawing short of taking the life of someone who was suffering mentally at the time of the crime,” says Bill Pelke, a Vietnam veteran and co-founder of the anti-violence advocacy group, Journey of Hope.

Nevertheless, critics argue there is no justification for excluding combat veterans from capital punishment on the grounds of health disabilities arising from their service.

“I am unaware of any case law, legal, medical or moral reasoning that could establish that all of those with PTSD or TBI should be exempt from the death penalty,” counters Dudley Sharp, a Texas-based victim’s rights advocate.

Bret A. Moore, a former military psychologist, is similarly skeptical about the tendency to cite PTSD in criminal cases.

“It gives us an opportunity to blame the violence on something, he says. “But there’s no significant data showing that people with PTSD are any more violent than people without it.

“My concern is that veterans are getting tagged as violent, which isn’t accurate and does a disservice to those who are suffering from the disorder.”

Far more prevalent are former soldiers who have been incarcerated after domestic violence, DUI, and low-level assault cases, all of which experts say are often fueled by drug addiction, alcoholism, and homelessness.

Editors Note: For more on Veterans Courts, please see Katti Gray’s TCR article, “When the War Comes Home”

For its part, the Veterans Administration vows that its four-year old initiative, dubbed the Veterans Justice Outreach Initiative, will enable the agency to specifically connect those veterans who have been incarcerated to VA care.

Barring the cost for treatment services, the White House budget calls for spending $33.7 million on the program this fiscal year.

The debate over whether or not PTSD-afflicted veterans should receive a death penalty exemption is unlikely to be resolved soon. It took many years, and countless legal challenges, before the Supreme Court allowed such exemptions for minors or mentally disabled individuals convicted of capital offenses.

Nevertheless, advocates hope the debate will draw more public attention.

“I’d like to see us change the dialogue,” says Robert Stanulis, who has consulted in numerous cases of troubled veterans nationwide as a neuropsychologist in Portland, OR. “Members of the military members aren’t insane killers; they’re trained to kill under certain circumstances.

“Soldiers should be held accountable, but we have to remember what war can do to a person.”

Curtis Stephen is a Brooklyn-based journalist whose work has appeared in The Daily Beast, Newsweek and AM New York. He welcomes comments from readers. His website is: http://curtisstephen.com